


Jeeves and the Kidnapped Bertie

by toodlepip



Category: Biggles Series - W. E. Johns, Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-17 17:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4675547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toodlepip/pseuds/toodlepip





	1. Kidnapped!

There are times in every gentleman's life when he has to admit that he has, as it were, entirely lost the plot. Take my own situation, a perfect example of precisely the sort of phenomenon I have in mind; no man, no matter how decent a chap he may be, ought to be expected to accept this sort of nonsense with naught but a raised eyebrow and a -- 

Ah. It occurs to me, as it were like the rays of the sun, which I believe is a Biblical quotation by origin – for I was quite a student of the Holy Book in my formative years, all the way to the dizzy heights of retrieving from the jaws of the Establishment a prize for Scripture knowledge. What book? Good lord, man, I forget. Some repellent tract or other – what was I saying? Ah. It occurs to me that I have neglected the work of the storyteller. Let me begin again, this time from the beginning. 

My sole intent this morning, or perhaps as it were yesterday morning, I've rather lost track of time, was to take the two-seater out for a little drive. As it happened, I'd had an invitation to lunch with my aunt. Not the one with the attitude and general compassionate nature of the Carpathian vampire, you understand, the other one. So I put on the old rags and a comedy monocle. Then I informed Jeeves of my intentions and pottered out to meet her, with only a brief altercation with Jeeves over the matter of the optics to limit my enjoyment of the clear, warm morning. 

We had a jolly good lunch, aside from a little coldness in her manner as regarded my choice of novelty eyewear. I'd been expecting that, of course, and informed her in no uncertain terms that there was nothing for it but, for I planned to stop by at the Drones shortly thereafter. We pip-pipped and wandered back in the direction of our respective vehicles. 

It was at that point that the afternoon took an unexpected turn. 

As I stepped foot on the pavement, a chap – what do you mean, what sort of a chap? A chap! - said, “Hullo! Would you be Bertie, by any chance?”

I said, “Most certainly,” and I believe I would've enquired into his motive for asking, had he not cut the conversation short by applying a cosh smartly to my head. At that point, the lights went out for some time. 

I awoke with something of a headache, along with a feeling of general lassitude that prevented me from immediately taking stock of my surroundings. Moving my head caused a firework display; once the blue touch-paper was lit and the sparks rose, it took a good few moments to subside. I believe I may have groaned a little at that juncture. 

When finally I was in a state to examine my surroundings, I took a look around and saw nothing particularly inspiring. The room in which I had been placed was one of those dreary, rather dingy rooms that are not so much furnished as congealed through the aggregation of stored furnishings, unhappy items whose fate it is to be rejected by everybody with a choice in the matter. The carpet was a dull brown, the curtains a dull grey, and the window a rather smeared affair that showed nothing but a darkened sky, the distant glow of a street lamp and what I estimated to be around a three or four-floor drop onto a street. Even had I been inclined to attempt an escape - you may recall that I have form in the matter of knotting bedsheets, and not a little practice in escaping through upper-floor windows - I noticed with a sense of dismay that it was barred.

Some considerate soul had left a glass of water on a side-table. Perhaps in an attempt to match the surroundings, it, too, was a muddy shade of brown. However, they say that beggars cannot be choosers, and I felt that the saying might also be considered to apply to Bertie Wooster, in his persona as a caged bird. I drank it down with only minor revulsion. 

A few minutes thereafter – it may have been an hour, and it may have been three - somebody rattled the door violently. 

“Keep it down,” I muttered, for I was still suffering from the dickens of a headache. “Do you have no consideration?”

“Bertie?” a chap yelped. Then the door bulged, the hinges flew from the wall as though they had suddenly been reminded of an appointment with the floor and didn't intend to miss it, and said chap – now revealed as a young, clean-shaven sort of military type – half-flew, half-stumbled through the splintered gap, collided with me, grabbed me around the shoulders and hugged me to him in a not entirely unpleasant embrace. 

“Bertie!” he repeated, peppering my cheeks with kisses (or perhaps I made up that bit, it's so hard to be sure). “Don't worry, old thing. You're safe now.”

I blinked. “Jolly glad to hear it,” I said. “But who, and I shouldn't want you to think that I was less than grateful for the pure kindness that you have shown, are you?”

He gave me a confused glance, retreating a little. “Don't be an ass, Bertie. It's me, Biggles. You didn't report in as we arranged, so naturally the Special Air Police alerted me. We investigated. Ginger tailed the Karloff brothers from London, and somehow managed to lift Igor's effects. Amongst them was a card with this address scribbled on it, so we knew that it must be you. I'd have been here earlier, but Algie pranged another kite and... I say... you're not concussed or something, are you?”

For some reason my legs had more or less given way by this point. Special Air Police? Igor? Ginger? I staggered gracelessly to a chair and let myself down on it.

“Biggles,” for I had ascertained that this was the chap's idea of a name, “I have absolutely no idea who you are. But thank you for saving me from what seems to be a jolly sticky situation.”

The chap knelt down before me and squinted in the half-light. “It really isn't you, is it?”

“To the best of my knowledge,” I said thoughtfully, “yes. But it occurs to me that you may be expecting a different you to the you that I would be expecting, as it were. I'm so sorry. Am I rambling?”

At which point, perhaps mercifully, two unshaven lunatics with guns popped their heads around the door and started to yell at us in Russian. “Hands off!” Biggles yelped.

I lost consciousness. Keeping it seemed like rather too much work at that moment; besides, as Jeeves often reminds me, the best way to keep one's affairs in order is never to hold on to anything that isn't doing you any good.


	2. Rescue

When I woke, the chap Biggles and I were manacled to the bed-frame. He stared at me in an owlish sort of a way.

“If you aren't Bertie,” he said, as though the gangsters had never interrupted our conversation, “then why are you here?”

“Ah.” I said. “There, in fact, you may have put your finger on what one might call the nub, or possibly the hub of the conversation. _Rem acu tetigisti_ , as the Romans might have put it, or so I am reliably informed by those who study the Classics.”

“Blast the Classics,” the chap said with a hint of impatience. “Out with it, man.”

“There's no need to take that tone,” I said, perhaps somewhat ungraciously but then I was a little nettled. One tries one's best to entertain. “All I meant to say is that I am Bertie. Or at least, I am a Bertie, although recent events seem to suggest that there is more than one young chap of that name floating around the fairest of cities, what?”

“It's bally ridiculous,” he retorted. “Just how many monocle-wearing Berties could one possibly expect to be wandering around Mayfair of a lunchtime, after all? You do know what this means, I hope.”

“No,” I said. “I'm afraid that Bertie Wooster is quite at sea. Although perhaps I should add that I was only wearing this monocle on a dare. I shouldn't like you to get the impression that I am not willing to invest in a full pair of spectacles, as and when the need arises.”

“Blast your bally spectacles!” he howled. “You sprang the trap. It took us weeks to set this up.”

I withdrew, offended, into my corner. 

He proceeded to rock the bed gaily back and forth. When I asked what he was doing, he explained that he was attempting to break off a segment of the frame so that it could be used either as a lockpick, or as a lever, so as to enable him to wreak wholesale destruction on the antique piece such that he could extract his manacled hands, get to the window, tear it open and climb down the building. 

I could not resist. “How do you intend to do that with your hands tied behind your back?”

He spat something unprintable, adding, “It'd hardly be a challenge if they weren't, now would it?”

I was on the verge of offering meek agreement, but at that stage the bed-frame terminally lost the argument and we tumbled down onto the floor, me first, Biggles on top of me, mattress on top of him, and barely did Biggles have the opportunity to inadvertently exhibit his body's reaction to my presence as camp-bed (not, I thought, displeased), before the door fell open again... and I heard the most wonderful sound that I ever hope to hear. 

Jeeves coughed tactfully. “Do you wish me to return later, sir? I intended to seek help in any case, but...”

I sang out at the top of my lungs, “Jeeves! We're under here!”

Biggles rolled away from me as the mattress was lifted from atop us, stripping his manacles from his wrists as he did so. Grabbing a piece of wire that he'd undoubtedly lifted from somewhere, he knelt back down to assist me with mine, but Jeeves was already lifting them from my wrists with the same quiet efficiency that I have seen him apply to the reorganisation of my sock drawer. 

“It distresses me greatly that I did not free you earlier,” he said quietly. “When investigating, I was initially informed by one of the compatriots of this young gentleman – a chap called Ginger, I believe – that you were on an assignation. It took some time before the possibility that this information was inaccurate arose. Indeed, I believe I should not have stumbled upon it at all if it had not been for the chance meeting with a gentleman of the name of Bertie Lissie, who in build and general appearance is not wholly unlike yourself. On entering the room, I felt another moment of uncertainty...” 

I followed his gaze to the strong figure of Major Bigglesworth; the slight lift of Jeeves' eyebrows bespoke his amusement. 

“Good Lord, Jeeves,” I said. “You are my constant companion and the apple of my eye, and I shall never doubt your investigative skills again. You have clearly been eating fish, for that massive brain of yours has certainly saved me today.”

I leant forward and kissed him gently. Then I whispered into his ear, “And if you have not been eating fish, I assure you that the night's events compel me to take you home... and feed you oysters.”

We left the building, stopping at a hotel to make a number of telephone calls. We called a cab. Biggles had a rather lengthier conversation in what sounded like some form of secret code with somebody called Field-Marshal Something-or-other in the remarkable military patois he'd demonstrated earlier; I followed little, although I filed away as much of it as I could, for it was just the sort of thing I like to spring on the chaps at the Drones. 

Biggles shook hands with us at the exit. “I say,” he said (a little redundant, that, but never mind), “I should perhaps apologise.”

“Nonsense!” I said brightly. “Of such ups and downs is life made, after all, and I daresay that my great-nephews and -nieces will cluster around me in my old age and beg great-uncle Bertie for the story of how he was kidnapped. Think nothing of it.”

“The fact is, it seems that your choice of fancy-dress has actually done our cause no harm at all. Apparently the perpetrators panicked after catching us, and were apprehended by the police at the airfield.” Biggles smiled faintly. “I'm going back to base. There are a few loose ends. And you, Mr Wooster, should go home and catch a few winks. Concussion is a bally treacherous condition, you know.” 

Then, taking a card bearing our address silently offered by Jeeves, he turned and melted away into the scenery as though he had never been. Like the Cheshire cat, he left nothing behind but a facial expression. In Biggles' case, it was the enduring impression of a broad wink. 

We went home, shedding garments as we went through the hall and into the bedroom. When the hamper from Harrods arrived – two dozen oysters, champagne, and strawberries – it was already clear that any aid they offered was entirely superfluous to requirements. 

I recall from my biblical readings that any story deserving of immortalisation is desperately in need of a moral. On reflection, it seems to me that the moral to be drawn from this tale is: go to lunch with aunts, unless they are the kind who snack on the youthful and defenceless. Always be polite to Air Force types, for you never know when they might be called upon to save your life. And if you're after an interesting evening, pop down to the theatre shop and buy yourself a monocle.


End file.
